Shrinking Violet

Shrinking Violet

I was late again and this wasn’t even an early morning appointment. I was supposed to cover a book launch this evening and that was all I knew about it. Oh that and and the venue. As I sat in the cab waiting for the signal to turn green, I decided to have a look at the invite so that I’d know what to look forward to. The book was by a first time author and apparently it was doing well in the literary scene. It was titled “Shrinking Violet”. Ah! That brought along some memories from my college days.

It was fun to rag the juniors when they’d newly arrived to college. It wasn’t anything serious. It served as a platform for introductions and often paved the way for some great friendships. It was beginning of the academic year and it was time for the newbies to arrive. And that was the day we, I mean our gang of four spotted a new girl walking towards the library. She was pretty and was wearing a violet top and was carrying a bunch of books in her hand. We decided to talk to her.

“Hey, what’s your name?”

“What are those books that you are caring?”

“College has just started miss, there is plenty of time to study!”

We kept speaking to her and she did not respond. There were tears in her eyes and she just ran into the library. This was not how we had thought it would go. We didn’t mean any harm. After that day, we always referred to her as the Shrinking Violet* because we didn’t know her name. We tried asking around about her but we didn’t get any answers. I don’t really remember seeing her in college after that. But for some reason here face was the one that I could never forget. I wondered where she was and what she was doing now.

Finally I reached the venue and as I entered, I saw the backdrop of the stage and I was astonished. Along with a picture of the cover of the book, there was a picture of the author. It was her- the shrinking violet.

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*Shrinking violet – A shy or modest person.

I’m participating in Bar-A-Thon and this post is my first post.

This time the theme for the Bar-A-Thon is “Seven”. I chose the seven colours of the rainbow. So each of my posts will be titled according to the colours of the rainbow.

A very well written story. The only concern I had was, the ragging was not that brutal. Maybe she had already been through some harrowing experience earlier that day but that didn’t come out. Maybe the girl was suffering from some issues. It would have been better off you had fleshed it out a little. Because I couldn’t feel the narrator’s feel of guilt. But your writing style is very good and I’ll definitely be back to read about the other colors.

I had read your Day 2 post first and loved it, so flipped back to this post to read from the start. I love the way you’ve thought of using the 7 colours of the rainbow for each post – brilliant idea! Looking forward to the next post!!